Diablo Cody, "Young Adult," and Pushing the Envelope—Sans Sex

Diablo Cody (who was born with the middle-American name Brook Busey) is the Hollywood A-list—but not quite mainstream—writer who wrote the Academy-Award winning original screenplay for the 2007 film, Juno, about a teenage girl's unplanned pregnancy. If there was one thing that puzzled me about Cody and that film, it's the complete lack of ardor in Juno's sex scene, performed by Ellen Page with Michael Cera. Don't teens like getting it on?

What makes this so puzzling (or perhaps not) is Cody's background as a sex worker, which she described with candor in her first book: Candy Girl. Does something in Cody's upbringing cause her to believe in the American creed that kids can't have sex? That she is seemingly down on teen sex is driven home by Juno's instantly becoming pregnant upon being sexually active, as though there must be a penalty for this transgression. If a smart girl like Juno used contraception—no plot.

This aversion to sex is so surprising because Cody seems intent on stepping outside usual cinematic and social boundaries in so many other areas. Along with Juno, Cody is best known for her Showtime series United States of Tara, about a mother with a mental condition called dissociative identity disorder, which looks like what used to be called multiple personality disorder. Cody obviously enjoys exploring the parts of America that don't fit into cookie-cutter Betty Crocker recipes.

Truth be told, there's no ardent sex in Cody's latest film, Young Adult, starring the achingly beautiful Charlize Theron, directed by Jason Reitman. Theron's character has sex—in fact, she is completely casual in deploying her body as a weapon to try to regain her former boyfriend, now married. But Theron never seems to enjoy sex either. It is just one more way in which she uses people as instruments to further her goals—not a fun activity in itself.

The Theron character—despite being beautiful and reasonably successful at her schlock writing career—doesn't seem to enjoy much of anything. For those of you following alcoholism in film, Theron's depression is depicted as the root cause of her addiction. (This is yet another cinematic failure to pick up the alcoholism-as-a-disease-state-independent-from-the-rest-of-life theory. Why can't filmmakers get that alcoholism is a disease, instead of portraying it as a life issue?)

Much ensues during Theron's return to her small town to try to recapture a forlorn, delusional shadow of her imagined former happiness. Her character never really gets back into the spirit of her own family, or the local values—and ennui—that she left behind when she evacuated for the big city (Minneapolis) and an earlier, now defunct marriage. She doesn't actually want that old life. And her disdain for those who live it—including her would-be lover—is evident in every frame of the film.

This arrogance does not make her an appealing character, although her indifference to others and their concerns can be bitingly funny. Why, she doesn't even really care for her closest companion—her small poodle, whom she lives with in a motel room and abandons at every opportunity. But Theron does learn through the course of the film exactly who she is, and is not, and what she wants. Leaving town un-hungover, she has gained a clear vision of what she needs from life.

Theron develops this self-awareness without really becoming a nicer person—despite having sex with a disabled man and pouring his sister's coffee before her own the morning after. And this is perhaps the most radical idea you'll see in a contemporary American film—that being nice to others and self-contentment do not necessarily go hand and hand. The film manages to be funny in a way that isn't the least bit uplifting. In fact, I wonder if others find it somewhat depressing, like I did. Ah, it was a dark comedy, you say.

Wonder what Cody will come up with next? Wonder if any of her characters will ever enjoy sex—you know, like sometimes actually occurs in life.

Filmmakers get all bogged down on what human beings are LIKE - how their feelings and efforts to resolve them lead them to alcoholism -- they're so STUPID -- if they just accepted that it's a DISEASE, they could be WISE and say, like you and RUTH FOWLER, "He's/she's an alcoholic because they're ALCOHOLICS!"

I just saw this movie last night and it hit way too close to home. The underlying plot of small-town stigma that surrounds any mental illness or disease was all-too-apparent to me.

I didn't read that she was an alcoholic because she was depressed, nor did I read that she was depressed because she was an alcoholic. I saw her character as an alcoholic. Who also had depression. And possibly a few other illnesses.

It's true that alcohol consumption with depression is a common film theme that's misinterpreted from two completely different illnesses that sometimes go hand in hand, but I think this one hit the nail on the head for me.

I am convinced that Theron's character is a psychopath/sociopath/narcissist. It appears that she has no empathy, no relationships (including her family) and only shows her dog any attention when she has alienated all of the people around her. She lies for no reason, manipulates, twists stories, has a grandiose view of herself and can only relate to relationships by stealing snippets of teenage conversation she overhears. She blames everyone else for any problems and avoids any kind of accountability. Abuse of drugs and alcohol is just one of the characteristics of psychopathy because people with these traits are easily bored. And they believe that it's everyone else's fault that they are bored. I think that what some have called depression is actually the character's psychopathic boredom. She is only happy when she is manipulating and trying to get something for herself. Psychopaths have disdain for anyone who has emotions which is evident by how much she hates the little town she grew up in. We also see a clue about her marriage in that he parents actually liked her ex-husband. Mavis is upset that her parents keep a photo of him, but I wonder if actually, he was a victim of a narcissistic spouse who got tire of him. Additionally, I believe that Mavis's rant at the end of the movie was a complete lie. She was always trying to bring the attention back to her - regardless of whether it was positive or negative attention and she wanted to "one-up" everyone else. Had she really wanted to change and pursue real happiness, she would have stayed, reconnected, and made amends. But the truth is that Mavis has absolutely no remorse, and I believe that her character has always been that way (the audience gets hints from high school stories that she has always been self-absorbed) and her leaving in a flurry with no thought of the man she just slept with or his sister (really, pouring her coffee first is supposed to make us think she's had some kind of revolution?) leads me to believe that she has no intention of changing and is just continuing her behavior, faulting everyone else. I'm actually really impressed not only with how incredibly accurate Cody's screenplay with regard to the life of a psychopath, but also Theron's chillingly accurate portrayal of one.

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